Intelligent transport systems and smart mobility Chapter | 18 201fast connection with nearby cities. It is also working on the concept of au-
tonomous airborne taxis and police cars.• London invested in a smarter underground (Tube) metro system and on
the use of bikes for commuting. Network-enabled sensors optimize main-
tenance costs and offer free wifi to track passengers’ movements and plan
transport more efficiently.
• San Francisco developed a smart system for detecting and controlling me-
tered parking occupancy and encouraging parking in less occupied spaces.
This resulted in reduced-gas emissions and 30% fewer vehicle miles trav-
eled. The city also promotes ride-sharing and is positive on the use of au-
tonomous vehicles by taxi companies.
Boston, Chicago, Seoul, Tokyo, Hangzhou, and Barcelona are among the
large cities that have invested in ITS and smart mobility, whereas smaller cities
such as Columbus Ohio, Copenhagen, Helsinki follow or even lead, by test-
ing and adopting innovative solutions. Traffic control systems and smart traffic
lights, smart parking systems, intelligent infrastructure maintenance systems
that reduce downtime, support for autonomous passenger information systems,
etc., are a few of the interventions that aim to improve the efficiency of urban
transportation. Frost and Sullivan have launched the interactive Smart Mobility
City Tracker (https://go.frost.com/LA_PR_AT_FValente_SmartCity_APR19),
which evaluates the performance of more than 100 cities in more than 150 data
indices that evaluate new mobility solutions, autonomous readiness, digitiza-
tion, sustainability, etc.
18.2 Sustainable smart mobility
Smart cities and intelligent transport systems are two closely related concepts
that rely on the use of IoT for connecting physical items (e.g., vehicles, road
infrastructure, etc.) in several application scenarios (European Commission,
2016 ). The city of Santander, Spain, is a city that invested a lot in smart mobil-
ity and has attracted the interest of many EU research programs that tested smart
urban mobility solutions that combine IoT and ICT technology, city, and public
transportation redesign, gamification, and other incentives in order to achieve
smart and green mobility. More parking places and mobile apps that help citi-
zens to locate free places, notifications about traffic and other city events, flow
estimation models, real-time traffic information and route planning in real-time
were some of the services that have been tested over the SmartSantander Plat-
form (http://www.smartsantander.eu).
Despite all the previous government efforts and research projects that tested
smart mobility solutions and promoted integrated transportation systems, the
Global Mobility report that evaluates transportation (GMR, 2017) shows that—
(1) people are still depended on their cars, (2) city centers still have big problems
from traffic, (3) the increased traffic brings pollution, noise, and degradation